After portraying George Woolf, Seabiscuit’s match-race jockey, in the movie “Seabiscuit,” what can Gary Stevens do for an encore?
Winning Saturday’s Arlington Million comes to mind.
Stevens will be riding Storming Home in the 13-horse race, and he likes his chances. The 40-year-old Hall of Fame rider won the Million on Golden Pheasant in 1990 and Marlin in 1997.
“This is a very, very good horse,” Stevens said. “He was a Group I winner in Europe last year and he’s a Grade I winner in the U.S. this year. I know he can win it . . . but everything has to go right.”
On paper, the field is perhaps the most formidable since the Million was initiated in 1981, and foremost among Storming Home’s opponents is Sulamani, invading from England with the best credentials of any European runner in race history.
Post positions were drawn Wednesday for the Million and Saturday’s other two world-class grass races at Arlington Park, the Grade I $700,000 Beverly D. for fillies and mares and the Grade I $400,000 Secretariat for 3-year-olds.
Sulamani will leave from Post 1 and is the 8-5 favorite on the morning line. Storming Home has Post 2 and is the 7-2 second choice. Two U.S. horses, Kentucky-based Perfect Drift and The Tin Man from California, are the co-third choices at 4-1.
Sulamani is a member of the Godolphin Stable all-star thoroughbred team assembled by Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum of the royal family of Dubai. Storming Home belongs to his brother, Sheikh Maktoum al Maktoum.
“Storming Home represents the biggest danger to Sulamani,” Godolphin racing manager Simon Crisford said. “He won the Champion Stakes (a 1 1/4-mile Group I race in England last October), he has continued to progress since moving to California and he’s obviously a very good horse. But if he had run against Sulamani last year in Europe, most would have favored Sulamani to defeat him.”
The two most notable conquests of Sulamani’s nine-race career came in last year’s Group I French Derby and this spring’s Group I Dubai Sheeman Classic. He also had noteworthy second-place finishes in last year’s Arc de Triomphe, in which he outran subsequent Breeders’ Cup Turf winner High Chaparral, and in last month’s King George and Queen Elizabeth, in which he lost to Alamshar, Europe’s most esteemed 3-year-old.
The eight-horse European contingent is the biggest in Million history, bettering the previous high of six. “The quality of the European horses is solid,” Crisford said. “They have proved quite capable of traveling and have some very good international performances. The German horse, Paolini, ran well in this race last year.”
Paolini finished sixth after being trapped in traffic much of the stretch.
Trainer Bobby Frankel, who has won 17 Grade I races and 38 graded stakes this year, has the 1-2 horses on the morning line for the eight-horse Beverly D. Tates Creek is the 5-2 favorite followed by Heat Haze at 3-1.
France, a colt from the barn of Aidan O’Brien, Ireland’s leading trainer, is the 3-1 morning-line favorite in the 12-horse Secretariat, and Evolving Tactics, trained by Ireland’s all-time leader in wins, Dermot Weld, is the co-second choice at 4-1 with Laura de Seroux’s Just Wonder.
